Kaiser Permanente employees voted to keep their current union after a high-stakes battle that pitted one worker organization against another in the largest private-sector labor election in more than 70 years.

NUHW, which created a formal alliance earlier this year with the California Nurses Association, represents about 10,000 people in California, so the addition of Kaiser's 45,000 pharmacy technicians, janitors, nursing aides and other workers would have been a huge coup had it won. SEIU, in contrast, has about 1.9 million members nationwide.

Thursday's count was a do-over of an earlier vote tally held in 2010, when 61 percent of workers opted to stay with SEIU-UHW. Following that election, NUHW challenged the results over allegations of misconduct. After agreeing SEIU's campaign tactics weren't fair, a judge ordered a new election.

Nearly same returns

Now, after spending millions of dollars and slinging animosity back and forth for nearly 2 1/2 years, the outcome was basically the same.

"This was a quirk of legal procedure that led to this election," said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW. "We're the best-paid health care workers in America. These are the best jobs in the hospital industry in America, and people don't throw that away to gamble their future with an organization that's failing."

Regan said the vote puts the battle to rest. "In my view, there is no chance whatsoever there will ever be another election like that at Kaiser," he said. "That's good, and now we can get back to the business of taking care of patients."

Readying challenge

But NUHW officials were already preparing to challenge the results, accusing SEIU of employing the same tactics that got the 2010 results thrown out.

"The resolve is stronger than ever," Sal Rosselli, who used to run SEIU-UHW until the international union ousted him, and he set up the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers.

The California Nurses Association's Deborah Burger agreed. "The solidarity that the nurses have with the workers will only get stronger as we continue with this fight," said Burger, the union's president. "This is not over."